Exploring a Hermeneutic of Hope

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Why don’t we celebrate with a section from In Memoriam A.H.H.Tennyson wrote this poem, with its cantos of raw grief enveloped by a calmer ring of a Prologue and an Epilogue, to mourn the untimely death of his friend. Part of the structure of this poem works around annual celebrations that work in the poem as a kind of scaffolding. The chaos of the raw elegy is organized in a ritual manner with a return to Hallam’s birthday and Christ’s nativity. This section of the poem follows the Christmas cantos of 104 and 105, and comes right before a section memorializing Hallam’s birth on February 1st.

I thought it resonated with our New Year’s festivities, especially this year…

In Memoriam A. H. H.CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

And here’s a fabulous rendition of the poem, that Tennyson could have never imagined…